Customer Reviews

Renegade Regimes: Confronting Deviant Behavior in World Politics

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In light of current activity from rogue states, such as Iran and North Korea, Nincic's book breaks new ground in the debate between the use of force and the use of peace. In a carefully crafted argument, Nincic demonstrates the benefits of using "carrots" over the futility of using "sticks" in coercing those adversaries of the United States to comply.

As an undergraduate student of international relations, I found this book to be incredibly insightful and convincing. Although there is some scholarship surrounding the effectiveness of economic sanctions, Nincic takes the study of renegade regimes and our reaction to them to a whole new level. He provides a thoughtful framework for understanding why regimes become renegades, how renegades respond to international condemnation, and what the best approaches have been and will be for dealing with renegades in the future.

The new outlook was refreshing, and he supported his theory with comprehensive case studies involving both post Cold War renegades (Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Libya, Afghanistan,Yugoslavia, Syria, Pakistan, and Sudan) as well as countries that had conditions to become renegades but did not (Algeria, Azerbaijan, post-Nasserite Egypt, Nigeria, Indonesia, and Yemen). In addition to a detailed explanation behind each case study, Nincic offers a statistical evaluation of the overall findings at different stages in his analysis which serve to simplify and strengthen support for his framework. His framework seems to have predictive power, and perhaps IR scholars will be looking to him more in the future with the growth of globalization. I look forward to reading the second edition of Renegade Regimes, which was just published about a month ago.